Episode 977: Comparative Force Mythology in the Star Wars Universe

We’re heading back to our extended series of looks at the Rogue One Ultimate Visual Guide, starting off with some new details about Cassian Andor, and then digging into the various “schools of study and worship” that make the pilgrimage to Jedha. Many of these groups, though coming from scattered points across the galaxy, share some commonalities in terms of their views on the Force and its entwinement with reality.

In fact, it seems as if what Pablo Hidalgo has done with the Guide is to create a playground from which any comparatively mythologist worth his or her salt would be able to create a life’s work. In fact, I daresay Joseph Campbell himself would have loved exploring the universe that they’re starting to develop, based on the existence of groups like the Guardians of the Whills, the Disciples of the Whills (different group), the Brotherhood of the Beatific Countenance, the Ninn Orthodoxy, the Zealots of Psusan, the Phirmists, and who knows how many others.

And in a bizarre coincidence, I happened to be listening to Star Wars: Oxygen, the John Williams podcast, which in its intro talks about how using a full symphonic score flew in the afce of conventional wisdom at that time. Well, at the same time, Campbell and comparative mythologists were falling out of favor as compared to “particularists,” who were focused more on the differences between world myths and religions, not the similarities. So there’s another way Lucas bucked the trend of the times and won!